From key to key and,
Through light and shadow, we make
A splendid journey.

The Great 48 refers to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, two books of preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys.

As I continue to work on my own fugue, I gain better understanding (and greater appreciation) for the form. My plan today is to listen to and read through some Bach fugues. This is an endeavor that is certain to instill some humility. It reminds me of the “we’re not worthy!” scene from the movie Wayne’s World.

First, you have to come up with a good theme, one that matches other music nicely. Weird intervals will make that difficult.

On the other hand, it can’t be too chord-driven, or you’re likely to end up with pesky parallel fifths, errant intervals whose presence instantly brands you as a rookie.

Fast forward. Ok, so once you have a subject, its “answer”, a countersubject, and maybe some nice filigree filler, you’re ready to start working with your nice, neat blocks of music.

Then I encountered another problem.

My software doesn’t make it easy to shift around blocks of music. I was hoping to work that way because playback lets you know instantly when things are really wrong in your layering of lines of music, or when you’re on the right track, but maybe only need to tweak a few things.

And I feared if I wrote it by hand I’d soon be up to my ankles in eraser crumbs and/or vacuuming out the piano. Or surrounded by tiny slips of paper arranged precariously and Tetris-like on a table, easily disturbed by a slight breeze or curious cat paw.

I was stuck. How could I move around these blocks of music?

And then it hit me. Blocks of music.

A fugue model built of LEGO® bricks!

If I put measures of music on the sides of bricks, I could easily shift them around—both horizontally (leaving room for filler) and vertically (getting the right juxtaposition of lines). Bricks containing the measures of the subject or countersubject could be held together with long, thin bricks to form a single unit.

Now I was onto something.

And, having children, I have enough bricks to accommodate the orchestral score of a Mahler symphony.

I chose 4×2 bricks to accommodate four beats of music per measure; the notes can be lined up nicely on the studs. I tailored the paper measure size to match the length of the brick, transcribed my music uniformly, scanned it, and made a zillion copies (including blank measures) to tape to the bricks. Partial and pickup measures, difficult to maneuver in my software, are now (literally) a snap with smaller bricks.

Another advantage that I then recognized was that each voice could be designated by a different brick color, or you could color-code the subject and countersubject.

Snapped together, the notes were now easy to play with, durable, yet super easy to modify. Like…well, you know.

Share this:

Like this:

I have been intrigued by fugues for a long time. The one that most people have heard is from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, a Halloween staple and the opener in Disney’s original Fantasia movie.

But what is a fugue exactly? It is a piece of music where different voices echo one another, but with a very specific formulation. A voice means a melody line, which may be represented by a human voice, an instrument, or one of the melodies played simultaneously on a piano.

The opening passage, the theme of the piece, is called the subject. For it to be an “official” fugue, the subject must be stated by each voice participating in the fugue. Typically, the first restatement of the subject (in a different voice), called the answer, is an interval of a fifth higher. The subject may be followed by a countersubject, a new passage that works well with the subject and will help in building the fugue.

The section where the subject, answer, and any countersubject are stated is called the exposition. The way in which the voices play off one another is called counterpoint. Typically, the key will change (sometimes multiple times), which keeps things interesting.

After the exposition, there is a development section. The subject and countersubject may be restated, probably numerous times, but they don’t have to repeat themselves in the same way each time—otherwise it would be a round or canon (like “Row, row, row your boat”). Changes will be made to reveal nuances in the musical passage (which sounds fancier than “to play around with it”), or to accommodate harmony in the interweaving of voices (so you don’t get unpleasant clashing of notes).

Finally, the whole fugue may wrap up with a coda or codetta that brings the fugue back to its initial key, but it’s not a necessary component.

Ok, so how do you do it?

Answer: not easily.

To start out, it helps to write a plain, vanilla passage for your subject (and countersubject), because once you start bouncing notes off one another, chaos will ensue if you pick weird intervals.

Chaos, like handing an 8-year-old an alarm clock and a screwdriver. Bits will be left over; parts may disappear; things will not fit together right. And it may never work.

The fugue is alive and well, though you probably won’t hear it on a top-40 radio station. That being said, YouTube yields facetious fugues written on themes by Adele and Lady Gaga and more (the Nokia ringtone?!).